There Once Was a Cute Little Fetus…

And drove her parents so crazy with the waiting and the walking and the spicy food and the old wives’ tales that her mother has developed a raging case of gestational insanity and cannot come up with a clever way to end this limerick.

I’d like to see you come up with something better at 40 weeks pregnant and change, you mythical little bastard.

Internet, I really didn’t think I’d be writing THIS post today, but yes, I am still very pregnant. And I want to thank all of you for your poetry-related contributions on the last post. I have read almost everything you’ve posted/suggested, and intend to finish up the rest today, during my most useless and unproductive day at work EVER. This is what I get for making sure everything was properly wrapped up and delegated on Friday: A really, really, really boring Monday.

When will I learn? Being proactive and responsible never pays.

I did have a pretty lively weekend, though. Friday night we made it out to the movies where we saw Adventureland (I recommend) and I was totally able to geek out over recognizing the local filming locations – something that is endlessly (and pathetically) exciting for me. Saturday morning we awoke to a much more somber scene: a mess of sirens and what we initially thought was some sort of construction-related jackhammering, but turned out to be AK-47 fire from the tragic scene that was unfolding about a mile away from our house. Awful, awful, awful. We stayed glued to the TV throughout the entire ordeal, hearing gunshots both live on the news and as they echoed through the alleys of our neighborhood. I kept seeing the whole situation through my baby-centric filter (I really can’t help it at this point): those police officers were someone’s babies, they had babies of their own. Even the psychotic asshole responsible for the entire disgusting mess was someone’s sweet little baby once.

It wasn’t the first time I was a little afraid to bring you into the world.

By the afternoon, we decided to make the most of the day and get out of the house for a bit. After 20 minutes on the elliptical during which I tried (and failed) to get some contraction-action going, we dropped off some stuff at the thrift store and headed to the mall so that I could up my chances of going into labor within 50 yards of a Yankee Candle.

I could just pretend I pissed myself in excitement over their new line of spring fragrances.

Actually, the main reason for going to this particular mall is that it is MASSIVE, and I wanted to get some quality, temperature-controlled walking time in. Of course, I realize that I was therefore technically a (*shudder*) Mall Walker, but I felt that the vagina-centric focus of my walk made me somehow cooler.

The walk was somewhat of a success, in that it resulted in regular contractions (even some painful ones! Woooo!), but there are only so many times a pregnant lady can walk past a Dairy Queen and the pretzel stand before she starts to consider the possibility of ordering a pretzel-flavored Blizzard, so after a while we left to get some spicy, spicy Thai food.

C’mon, pad kee mow! Gimme a baby!

It was SERIOUSLY delicious, but did not produce much in the way of contractions. Of course, I don’t know how quickly all this induction shit is supposed to work, but any excuse to eat spicy food is really OK by me.

Afterwards, we went home and continued our Very Movie Weekend by watching Let The Right One In, a creepy as FUCK movie from Sweden about an adorable little girl who also just happens to be a BLOOD-SUCKING VAMPIRE.

Dear baby: Please do not be a vampire. I refuse to supplement my breastmilk with the blood of innocents.

On Sunday we continued our quest for contractions and disturbing cinema with a 4-mile walk and a screening of Milk. The results: pretty regular contractions and a burning desire to find this Anita Bryant character and tell her to cram it sideways.

Dear Anita: Cram it sideways.

But! The contractions that started up on our walk continued (albeit randomly) throughout the evening, and continually woke me up overnight. But as soon as I got up and took a shower this morning, everything kind of stopped. I’ve had some this morning at work, but they’re just the kind that tighten my belly – nothing particularly painful, just uncomfortable.

HOWEVER: I just had a conversation with a coworker who had a baby in December, and she told me her contractions weren’t painful until she was in the hospital getting her water broken, just a few hours away from giving birth.

So…progress? Possibly? Can I get excited now? Was I right to wear old shoes to work today in case my water breaks?

Do I have time to swing by DQ on my way to the hospital?

(Something tells me that the answer to that question is always “yes.”)

We watched what was the most depressing movie I’ve seen in AGES, I Am Legend (with Will Smith) and then the ending wasn’t any good. I think we need to go out and see adventureland. We do not, however, need to go see a little girl vampire movie.

I have been sending you “Have baby now!” thoughts since last Wednesday. I’m sorry my powers of labor induction are not working very well from this far away.

I know! I know! My Twitter feed is totally pissing me off. I think you can just find me on the Twitter site directly if you go there. But! I promise I will also post (a very short) blog post before I go to the hospital. Unless, like, the baby’s crowning all of a sudden or something.

Whoa, that was right near your house? The world is crazy and sad. I was freaked out by the shooting in Binghamton, having gone to school there and knowing the location (and the student who lives next door who kept getting interviewed by the local news while she’s home on spring break). And Anita Bryant can suck it. Milk was a great movie, but I was sad to think that we haven’t progressed far enough from some of those scenes. Oh, and I hope your baby isn’t a vampire. That would make for some very uncomfortable breastfeeding.

I was devastated when I got to 40 weeks, but then I ended up giving birth at 40wks 2days so it wasn’t much longer! So anyway my friends told me to have sex with my husband to induce labor! I was like are you kidding me? My friend called it a “mercy killing,” which kept me laughing for days.

Let me tell you, it’s better when the baby is in than when the baby is out! Looking back I’m grateful he stayed in that long because it got him nice and big (bigger tummy = sleeps longer between feedings).